Leopard bug identified with moving data
by Tom Krazit
November 6, 2007 11:21 AM PST

If you're moving data from one Mac or PC to a Mac running Mac OS X Leopard, don't trip over the cord. Tom Karpik, a computer science student at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, says he has identified a bug in Leopard that can cause you to lose data if problems occur while moving files between two different storage volumes, such as two different hard drives.

Apparently, the problem is that if the source of the file crashes or is disconnected from the network while the move is under way, the contents of the file completely disappear from the source machine, and you're only left with whatever had already been copied to the destination machine. We're talking about moving files here, not copying them, which is a bit more dangerous way of getting a file from one place to another.

When you opt to move a file, you're acknowledging that you want that file deleted from the source machine after the operation is completed. And you have to actually hold down the Command button when dragging the file from one volume to another to bypass the default way of doing this operation, which is to "copy" the file from source to destination when the icon is dragged across the screen.

Commenters on Karpik's blog, Slashdot, and others like Daring Fireball's John Gruber point out that you're asking for trouble if you opt to "move" files rather than copy them. An easy way to avoid any problems is to just drag the file from one volume to another without pressing any keys, and if you really want the file gone from the source machine, manually delete it after everything has been completed.

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Uh Oh! Looks like Macs' legendary reliability has gone for a ball! Remember when it was bug free, crash proof and there was no need for anti virus software? Seems like it's begining to behave a lot like windows lately